


A Soldier Gone to War

by the_toadlet



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Character Death, Homophobia, M/M, Suicide, Trans!Phil, Transphobia, hey hey hey i'm back with a new thing, hope you like it, it's also really unrealistic so, nobleman!dan, royalty!phil, two year gap instead of four year bc plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 12:26:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10899333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_toadlet/pseuds/the_toadlet
Summary: Fiona Victora Alexandria Lester is the royal princess of the United KingdomAccording to most of the country, anyway.Fiona becomes Phil and runs amok in her city, slowly falling in love with Daniel Howell, a minor nobleman who slept outside because he was being a 'rebel'.





	A Soldier Gone to War

**Author's Note:**

> shoddy description i know but shh

The day Fiona realised she wanted to be Phil was an odd one. She had etiquette lessons, proper posture, table manners, and proper courting techniques(for the Royal Women of the Lester household).

 

And she really, really, hated it. She fought every teacher on every subject, protesting with loud ‘If I was a boy, I wouldn’t have to do this!” and so forth on the injustices of forcing her to do things she didn’t want to.

 

So Fiona locked herself in her room, shed her nasty gown, and scoured through her wardrobes to find her least feminine outfit. A pair of loose trousers and an informal shirt later, Fiona looked in her mirror and declared herself Philip, the youngest prince of the royal household.

 

And then escaped through the window. 

 

Phil wandered his city alone, a young boy going unnoticed among the crowds of adults and screaming babies. He was Philip, wasn’t he? Not Fiona, he never really felt like he was Fiona, he was just wearing a mask. Under all those dresses and frocks Fiona was Philip Lester, and he intended to stay that way as long as possible.

 

\---

 

The day after Phil became not-Fiona, his parents were very, very angry at him.

 

“ You’re out daughter, obey us!” Phil wanted to scream that he wasn’t their daughter, he was their  _ son, _ couldn’t they just leave him be? No, they didn’t see that, Phil still looked like the pretty princess he was supposed to be. 

 

Dammit, why was this so  _ hard?  _ Phil just wanted to be a little boy, and the only one who would understand was his older brother Martyn, but he was the shame child. Because, and Phil simply could not understand his parent’s logic, seeing their elder son making out with another boy was considered a traitor to the royal family. Phil had tried to argue on his behalf, but Martyn had gently pushed him behind him and taken up the shouting match himself. Martyn’s lover had taken Phil into his arms when Phil had started crying and said it would all be alright, he and Martyn would be okay.

 

Of course, that was before the harsh crack of flesh on flesh rang out and Martyn stumbled back from a wicked slap to the right side of his jaw. Phil had gasped and buried his face into Martyn’s companion’s neck, trying to make the scene go away. 

 

_ “ I will not have a  _ **_faggot_ ** _ in my household any longer!”  _ The anger Phil could hear in his father’s voice scared him, and  the words stayed with him. If a boy liked another boy, he was a ‘faggot’. Maryn had slammed his clothes into a case while Phil trembled in his lovers arm, and when Martyn was done packing, he took Phil out of his male companion with surprising tenderness. He had kissed the top of six-year old Phil’s head and wished him goodbye and goodluck.

 

That was about ten years ago, and now Phil was sixteen, but that night still stayed with him. The anger, the pain, the confusion and the heartbreaking loss of his older sibling.

 

Which was the first reason Phil didn’t tell his parents he wasn’t their little Fiona anymore. The second was because he didn’t know  _ how.  _ How do you tell your mother, who says they’re so grateful for her beautiful little girl at grace every day, that her ‘little girl’ wasn’t a girl? And how do you tell your father, who always smiled and said he was glad that his daughter wasn’t as fucked up as his son?

 

Answer; you don’t. Not in Phil’s case, anyway. So he just pretended he was Fiona, smiled and laughed appropriately, but ducked out and left during the night and early hours. He stalked through the city, smiling and waving and telling people his name was Phil and he didn’t like cheese.

 

\---

 

Phil reached the age of marriage far too quickly, in his opinion. He hadn’t come out to his parents, but he had a wig made and he chopped his hair into a masculine fringe. The few trusted servants he told all agreed to secrecy and helped him in and out of dresses and smuggled clothes for him to wear in the streets.

 

The boon of a royal is the power and the wealth, but the harsh truth was that Phil had to hide behind his mask of a smiling and happy Fiona.

 

His parents asked why he had stopped laughing the day he turned eighteen.

 

He never told them.

 

\---

 

Phil broke out of the castle as much as he was able, running amok in the muddied streets. 

 

He was out and amongst his people when he nearly tripped over the small heap in the gutter.

 

Phil jumped out of his skin when the lump addressed him in annoyance.

 

“ Jesus, would you watch where you’re off, mate? Nearly hacked my lucky ole’ head off, there.”

 

“ I do beg your pardon! I hardly noticed you my good… sir?” Phil’s voice squeaked at the end of his sentence. The lump sat upright, pushing hair the colour of rain-sodden manure and eyes the colour of cinnamon. 

 

“ I am a sir, thank ye’ very much. What’re you doin’ that requires so much kicking of nobles?” Phil blinked.

 

“ Nobles?”

 

“ Daniel Howell, son of the eighth most important man in the country.” The boy proclaimed with a flourish and struggling to his feet. Phil squinted, and on second thought, this kid- Daniel- did look an awful lot like the silent kid that stood by the back pillars when Phil’s father gathered the nobles together.

 

“ Well, I’ll be. I do beg your forgiveness, mister Howell. Might I inquire as to why you were sleeping in a gutter?” Phil tilted his head with an innocent glance to the slightly younger boy in front of him. If he remembered correctly, Phil was two years Daniel’s elder. 

 

Dan frowned. The boy in front of him had an awful lot of impudence to talk like that to a noble. He looked and sounded familiar, but Dan just couldn’t place where the hell he had seen this kid.

 

“ None of your business. Say, where’d you learn to talk like a fancy noble-woman?” Dan snickered, but stopped when Phil looked completely stricken at being called a noble  _ woman.  _ “Hey, are you okay? You look a little-” Dan’s eye’s snapped open. How he had missed that  _ Princess Fiona  _ was standing in front of him, in a man’s garb at that, was beyond him. “My- my apologies, prinse-” Dan was starting to sink to his knee in front of the Princess when she abruptly stuck a hand over his mouth.

 

“ No, no be quiet, shut up. We need to get out of such  public area.” Phil was more then suitably annoyed with the little shit in front of him “Come on, I know a stream nearby that nobody ever goes to.” Phil took his hand off the nobles mouth and instead dragged him through the streets towards the creek.

 

Once they arrived at the slowly moving trickle of water, Phil whipped around to Dan. “Okay, listen here. Do  _ not  _ call me Fiona. Ever. I hate that name. My  _ name  _ is Phil.” Dan blinked at the princess in front of him.

 

“ What?” Phil groaned and threw back his head.

 

“ Oh, for god’s sake. I’m Phil in the streets, and if you ever call me Fiona or princess here, or even ‘your majesty’, I promise you bad things will happen. Also, don’t call me Phil in the castle.” 

 

“ So, is it like a cover? Or a codename or something?” Phil blinked at the dumbass in front of him.

 

“ What- mate. I never wanted to be a girl, yeah? So I escape the castle to be a boy. Does that get through your thick head of yours?” 

 

“ Oh, you’re one of those tran-sexuals!” Phil wished there was a wall to bash his head in on nearby.

 

“ Sure. One of those ‘transexuals’. Just, call me Phil here and we’ll be good, okay?” Dan nodded in (finally!) comprehension.

 

And Phil really hoped the tiny little crush on the nobleman in front of him wasn’t going to be a problem.

 

\---

 

Phil went out again the next night, not expecting to find Dan actually waiting for him.

 

“ Psst! Phil!” Phil froze and whipped around.

 

“ Daniel, what the hell are you doing?” Phil tried to sound intimidating, but it just sounded confused. He could nearly smell the massive grin off Dan, as well.

 

“ I wanted to hang out with you. Y’know, like friends? Which you don’t have, as far as I know.” Phil sniffed haughtily, but he couldn’t deny that.

 

“ I don’t need friends.” Phil turned around to keep walking, but Dan grabbed his arm.

 

“ No, wait, I know  _ you  _ don’t, but I’d like to be your friend? I was rude yesterday, I know, and I’m sorry.” Phil tilted his head to show he was listening, but he didn’t turn back around. “I’ll make it up to you?”

 

“ How do you plan on doing that?”

 

“ I dunno, dragging you off somewhere to do something stupid?”

 

“ How is that ‘making it up to me’?” Phil couldn’t keep the smile out of his voice, though, so Dan’s grin lit back up.

 

“ It’s just a thing that boys do, y’know?”Phil finally gave in with a chuckle turning around to find Dan a lot closer than he expected, and he froze and the laugh died in his throught.

 

Maybe he was just the same type of fucked up his brother was.

 

Maybe Phil didn’t care, because Dan was so close, and warm, and he looked soft, and Phil felt like he was falling.

 

And the hard cobble road reminded him of that, and he laughed and laughed with Dan until the sun came up because they went and they did something stupid and they had fun and it made Phil feel at home.

 

And he never wanted to give up that feeling.

 

\---

 

After that, when he snuck out, it was always with the sole purpose of finding Dan and going off to do whatever it was boys did in their free time. 

 

Fiona’s ball to find a suitor was coming up, as well, and the ballgown was quite possibly the worst thing Phil had ever seen. But he’s shoulder it and wear Fiona’s mask because Dan was invited and  _ he would get through this.  _

 

Dan and Phil looked for Martyn, occasionally. Phil giggled at Dan’s focused look when he was searching through record books, and Dan chuckled at the way Phil would doze off when it reached the wee hours of the morning. It took them three weeks, a stolen canteen of brandy, and four nights of Phil getting home after the sun had risen to find him with his partner, a non-binary person named Cornelia.

 

They visited once, and Martyn had hugged Phil and cried and cried and cried, and Phil had done the same. Martyn understood that Fiona was a mask and he had a brother, not a sister, and Cornelia was very sweet and welcoming.

 

And then Phil and Martyn kept in touch by letter, because Phil was so lonely but he couldn’t go back. He needed to spend as much time as he could with Dab, and as much as he’d love to see his brother again, he could wait.

 

But after Fiona’s suitor ball, Dan was going to enlist in Her Majesty's Royal Army and try not to die.

 

For Phil.

 

\---

 

The night of the ball, Phil couldn’t sneak out. Maids were bustling around his room, someone was helping him re-fit his dress, and Phil was completely powerless to do anything about it. Dan understood, Phil had warned him about this, but he couldn’t help but be sad about his best-friend-maybe-more not being there.

 

The ball itself was late in the afternoon, a large and pompous activity of Fiona dancing with so many men and assholes in coats that she barely remembered any of their names or faces. Dan swept Fiona off to dance twice before someone was saying he had too many turns with the princess(and Fiona promptly declined a dance with him with a sickly sweet smile and resumed dancing with Dan, who had a terribly hidden smirk on his face).

 

And then the royal feast, which had altogether too much toasting of the princess and whoever was to be her groom and not enough eating.

 

Phil just wanted to run away from it all. He was itching to, in fact. But Dan twirled Fiona and smiled and had a look in his eyes like he didn’t want to be there either, and that was enough to ground Phil. Dan was here, because Phil asked him to be, and so Phil would stay. Because Dan needed him to be.

 

Phil suffered through foreign princes and minor noble’s sons grinning with too many teeth and attempting to kiss Fiona. Fiona faltered once or twice, and Phil felt like slapping the fuckers who had dare insulted himself or Dan.

 

He didn’t. Fiona, the long-dead princess who remained as a barrier between the little boy who ran and laughed and the world, stopped him.

 

Dan stood in a corner and watched as his best-friend-love-of-his-life danced the night away with men who didn’t love her. Didn’t love him. Men who never saw past the little Fiona facade and saw the man hiding there, Philip Lester instead of Fiona Victora Alexandria Lester.

 

Dan hated them.

 

Dan hated all of them.

 

But Dan couldn’t do diddly squat about it, either.

 

So he stood in his corner and seethed until Fiona whipped him away for another dance.

 

And then after that brief flare of happiness, he went back and seethed some more.

 

Fiona was frankly bored and tired of dancing with idiots who either couldn’t dance, couldn’t talk, or simply  _ weren’t Dan.  _ That was an alarming trend, now that she thought of it. The only person she wanted, that Phil wanted, to dance with and talk and laugh with was Dan.

 

It was then Fiona made the ‘startling’ revelation that he loved Dan.

 

Phil ignored whoever he was dancing with, some arch-nobleman-baron something by the name of Mycroft. He wasn’t a bad dancer, or a bad conversationalist, but Phil just had the feeling that there was something lurking under the surface that he didn’t know about. Phil scanned the crowds, searching for the familiar hobbit hair that was his best-friend-love-of-his-life.

 

Sulking in the corner, big surprise. Phil suppressed a smile when he saw the slouched figure glaring at one of the more potent nobles there. The baron-noble-possible-a-bishop he was dancing with had fallen silent when Phil had started looking for Dan.

 

“ Princess? Or, shall I call you Phil?” Phil stiffened like a board, but Mycroft was quick to calm him down. “I have no malicious intent, do not worry. I must tend to my younger brother, though, and your young man in the corner needs to be danced with. I recommend telling your father that you wish to marry him before the end of the night, else he may pick a suitor for you.” Phil nodded in surprise at the man.

 

Mycroft smiled ruefully once he had Sherlock under control and not pick-pocketing the royal family. He had seen that the Princess, or the Prince, as the case may have been, was very much not looking for someone else. He only had eyes for the minor noble in the corner, and Mycroft was okay with that. Why mummy had forced him to this event was beyond him, but he had a feeling it was a lust for power more than wanting Mycroft to be in any sort of love.

 

Phil swerved through the crowds, giving the proper half-curtsy and mumbled apology if she ran into someone. Phil’s only goal was Dan, who had noticed Phil by now and was also ducking through the crowd, having an easier time if only because Dan wasn’t wearing a dress, and they met in the middle with a bit of stumbling and clinging to eachother.

 

“ Are you okay?” Phil smiled giddily at the concerned an in front of him.

 

“ I am now. Can I kiss you?” Phil tilted his head, his wig sliding a little. He didn’t care, though. 

 

Dan responded by raising his hands to Phil’s face and dragging him into a lip-lock that Phil wholeheartedly returned.

 

\---

 

Phil’s father was jovial when Dan was proclaimed Fiona’s groom. Finally, his little girl was getting married. He would have grandkids, he didn’t have to invite his fuck-up of an older son, all was well. Including the fact that his new son in law had a plan to join the Royal Arms within three months.

 

One less person to deal with, after all. He most likely wouldn’t die.

 

The Royal Arms didn’t send out new recruits to the most dangerous places first, so Daniel would survive at least five more years.

 

\---

 

Dan died by gun-shot to the chest. The fifth northumberland fusiliers were gunned down in Afghanistan, with one sole survivor named John.

 

Phil got a phone call from someone named Mycroft(how familiar it sounded, as well) saying that John was in safe hands with his younger brother, and he was sorry about the loss of Phil’s fiancé. 

 

A week before official news reached the royal family that Dan was dead.

 

Phil was in mourning, finally coming out as Phil Lester and not Fiona.

 

He lived with Martyn and Cornelia for a few years after that, eventually securing a flat in the middle of Manchester.

 

Dan’s body was recovered and buried in a lone field by Leeds.

 

Phil visited as much as he could.

 

Life went on.

 

\---

 

Phil had gone long enough without Dan, why was he having a relapse  _ now? _

 

Phil sat in a heap, curled into a corner of his new London flat. He clutched a photo of Dan, in full army uniform. 

 

The gleam of Dan’s eyes had long since faded, the shine of his buttons dulled by time and Phil’s tears smudging the glass. 

 

Phil was going to do it.

 

He was going to take Dan’s old gun, and finally join his husband.

 

It was years.

 

Minutes.

 

Seconds.

 

How  _ had  _ Phil survived this long?

 

The gun felt heavy in his palm, a solid weight against the floating sensation in his limbs.

 

“ Dan, my darling, I’ll see you soon.”

 

The crack of a bullet, the smashing of glass, the thud of a body hitting the floor.

 

A single inscription, blood seeping into the lines etched onto paper.

 

_ I’ll return to you, my love.  _

  
_ Love, Dan <3 _

**Author's Note:**

> do you hate me
> 
> sorry(ish)


End file.
